The New Three Year Old!

Lincoln is three!  Matt took the day off of work and we had a nice family day.  

We started the day off by opening a gift that contained some train shirts.  I knew those would be a hit, as Lincoln has a train sweatshirt that he requests to wear daily regardless of the weather!  So now we have options for warm, cool, and cold weather in the train wear department!

We opened presents throughout the day!

I think this type of present opening allows for more enjoyment of the gifts.  I'm not a big fan of the frantic glazed eyed look a small child can develop when ripping open a big pile of presents without even breathing.  There's no appreciation in that!

A side benefit of opening presents through out the day is there is time to explore them a bit more:

The marble run pieces that work with duplo pieces were a bit hit with Lincoln (and his older brothers... I had to remind them to share with the birthday boy!!!).

There was, of course, a trip to the playground in the afternoon.  Because when you're three nothing is more fun than an afternoon outside!

We had an early dinner/cake session around 5:30.  Grandma Vicki, Grandma Karen, and Tyler all came over to join us.

Lincoln told me he wanted cereal for his birthday day meal, and I figured that was an easy request to oblige:

Cake time!  Because sugar (cake) with our sugar dinner (cereal) is just perfect.... we went with a turtle theme.  Grandma gets most of the credit for the big turtle cake. Lincoln picked the cake from a selection of five choices - I thought that rolling out tootsie rolls and airheads (the hexagons on the turtle) would be easy.  Oops.... :) Viva put frosting on the cupcakes and I decorated them with little turtles. 

Lincoln did a good job blowing the candles out!

We all enjoyed our cake.

And, of course, there were more presents:

Check out this gorgeous afghan (it came with a sailor Pooh Bear) Grandma Vicki made:

(I will post a better picture in a separate post - it is a lovely sailboat afghan!).

To wrap up the day there was a viewing of Finding Nemo and story time.  And lots of "happy birthday to me" singing by Lincoln.  The day was a success.